A Magical Contraption
by NoelleWynters
Summary: Storybrooke was filled with wonderful and curious little things Alice had never seen before, and this certainly was the most baffling one yet.


_Standard disclaimer applies: I own nothing, this is all for fun._

_Written for a challenge community, the word prompt for this was **telephone**. This is a bit of a little moment in my** A Sense of Home** (all the stories are listed in my profile) series...I'm leaving it in the main OUATIW section as the OUAT character isn't in it for very long. This can be read as a stand alone though._

Alice turned the rectangular contraption over in her slender hands, wondering what exactly it was. She thought to ask Cyrus, but knew he'd be even more clueless than she was, despite the fact he'd arrived in the realm Storybrooke was in before she did.

Whatever it was, when she pressed the button on the bottom it would light up for a few passing moments, telling her the time. There was also a picture of a kitten carrying on about cheeseburgers, among a few other funny symbols above the time and the picture that meant nothing to her.

And just like that, it would magically turn itself back off. So she'd repeat the action, look at it with curiosity gleaming in her blue eyes and watch it go dark again.

"Have you figured out what it is yet?" a soft voice asked next to her.

She pouted a bit as she glanced over to Cyrus, annoyed she still had no idea what she was holding. "No, it is a curious little piece of magic," she answered.

Cyrus laughed a bit at her words as he sat next to her on the chesterfield; there was no magic in what she was holding. "Whatever it is, it isn't magical."

"Are you sure? Oh well, I guess you would know," she commented as she pressed the button again to see the kitten wailing for a cheeseburger. Out of the two of them, he would be the expert on all things magical. He couldn't use his magic for his own purposes but he could sense it in other people, objects and feel it in the air around them. He'd commented a few times about the strong presence of magic in Storybrooke, marveling at the strength of the spell that had created the town.

"Maybe Belle could tell us what it is; I've seen her with something similar before. She talks at it, a lot," Cyrus suggested, recalling the many times he'd seen Belle with one of those little rectangular things. Her's was a pale shade of blue instead of black, and she did spend quite a bit of time talking at it.

Now that he thought about it, he had seen a lot of people in Storybrooke with those things in various shades and shapes, either talking at it or poking at it with their fingers. He'd always been curious what they were doing, but at the same time he wasn't interested enough to know. His interest in it died when he'd seen one of two people walk into street signs whilst looking intently at the tiny contraption they were holding in their hands.

But of course Alice would be longing to know what it was, she simply could not leave anything be. It had gotten them both into a few very interesting scrapes back in Wonderland, and her inquisitive nature was one of the many reasons he loved her.

Right when Alice was about to go find Belle and inquire as to what the contraption was it lit up on its own, startling them both. What struck them as strange was instead of the usual photo of the kitten it showed a picture of them at the diner a week or two ago. As well, there was some woman singing about genies and bottles.

"Oye! So that's where I left my phone!" Will, the Knave of Hearts, exclaimed as he walked into the room, hitting the off button on the portable phone he was holding.

Alice looked from the strange contraption, which she now knew was called a phone, to Will. "It doesn't look like a phone."

He grinned as he took it out of her hands. "This is a mobile phone, they always look different from these ones," he explained, waving around the portable phone from Belle and Rumplestiltskin's front hall before dropping it on the coffee table. "They're handy little things, I was worried someone had nicked it and was trying to beat my high score on minecraft. Although with you two I guess I didn't need to worry."

Alice rolled her eyes, she really didn't understand Will's obsession with all these contraptions, she'd rather spend her time with a good book, or out on some sort of adventure rather than glued to a tiny phone or that thing he called a telly. "Why did some woman start singing?" she asked.

Will took a second or two to answer, as he was busy making sure no one had, in fact, played his game. "Oh, that's a ringtone. I have different ones assigned to certain numbers. I never expect Belle or Rumpel to give me a ring, but you might so I thought it was perfect," he told her, grinning mischievously.

Alice quirked an eyebrow as Cyrus rolled his dark eyes. "You chose a song about genies and bottles for our ringtone, as you called it, to know it is us calling?" she asked, her voice sounding a touch exasperated with the ongoing joke.

"Oh come on now, after that trip to Wonderland to save your genie there," he teased, nodding towards Cyrus who was looking at him with a mixture of amusement and irritation "I couldn't help using a song called _Genie in a Bottle_. It suited."

Alice groaned slightly as Will went back to playing with his phone, it really was a strange little device. He went on to tell her about something called texting which made her think of the magic paper Cyrus used from time to time, and she had to admit she liked the paper a bit more than the concept of texting, much to Will's bafflement.

"Really dearie, I didn't know you liked kittens so much."

Will jumped at the sound of Rumplestiltskin's voice beside him, turning to see the man at his left with a bemused expression on his face. "Bloody hell, how do you do that?" he demanded, his eyes wide.

"Centuries of practice, but really, interesting phone wallpaper you have there. I never knew you liked kittens that couldn't spell so much," Rumpel teased, smiling as Alice and Cyrus both laughed softly.

Will pouted as they all laughed, in truth he thought Alice and Cyrus would at least get a kick out of the kittens. The two of them were so syrupy sweet at times he swore prolonged exposure to them would cause cavities.

"Well, I found my phone so I guess I'll be off," he abruptly said, turning on his heels and walking out.

Rumpel shook his head when he heard the front door click shut. "What did he do? Go to everyone's house to use their phone to call his?"

"It would appear that way," Cyrus observed, smiling.

Rumpel shook his head as he moved towards the front door to lock it. "We really should change the locks."


End file.
